By default, PC-BSD® will assume that you wish to install on the entire first disk. [[File:Disks1.png|thumb|393px|'''Figure 3.4a: Disk Selection Screen''']] On systems with less than 2GB of RAM, that drive will be formatted with the UFS+SUJ filesystem. On systems with 2GB or RAM or more, that drive will be formatted with the ZFS filesystem.

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By default, PC-BSD® will assume that you wish to install on the entire first disk. [[File:Disks1a.png|thumb|393px|'''Figure 3.4a: Disk Selection Screen''']]

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{{danger|width=48.5%|icon64='''''If you are installing PC-BSD® as the only operating system on your computer, simply click "Next" to start the installation. However, if this is not your intent, review the rest of this section to determine how to layout your disk. If you plan on booting PC-BSD® with another operating system, you should also review the section on [[Dual Booting]].'''''}}

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{{danger|icon64='''''If you are installing PC-BSD® as the only operating system on your computer, simply click "Next" to start the installation. However, if this is not your intent, review the rest of this section to determine how to layout your disk. If you plan on booting PC-BSD® with another operating system, you should also review the section on {{local|link=Dual Booting}}.'''''}}

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* '''Basic:''' (default) select this mode if you wish to specify which partition or disk to install to or if you wish to encrypt user data.

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* '''Basic:''' (default) select this mode if you wish to specify which partition or disk to install to.

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* '''Advanced:''' select this mode if you wish to specify the installation partition or disk, use GPT partitioning, encrypt user data, disable the FreeBSD boot menu, or specify the filesystem to use and the layout of that filesystem.

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* '''Advanced:''' select this mode if you wish to specify the installation partition or disk, use GPT partitioning, disable the FreeBSD boot menu, or specify the filesystem layout.

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{{danger|icon64=''' ''Regardless of the mode that you select, once the disk wizard completes and you click "Next" at the disk "Summary" screen, a pop-up window will ask if you would like to start the installation. Be sure to review the disk summary before clicking "Yes" and starting the installation.'' ''' {{redlight|text=The disk "Summary" screen is your ''' ''very last chance'' ''' to make sure that you are ready.}} Once you click "Yes", the selected hard drive or partition will be formatted and ''' ''any data it contains will be lost'' '''.}}

{{danger|icon64=''' ''Regardless of the mode that you select, once the disk wizard completes and you click "Next" at the disk "Summary" screen, a pop-up window will ask if you would like to start the installation. Be sure to review the disk summary before clicking "Yes" and starting the installation.'' ''' {{redlight|text=The disk "Summary" screen is your ''' ''very last chance'' ''' to make sure that you are ready.}} Once you click "Yes", the selected hard drive or partition will be formatted and ''' ''any data it contains will be lost'' '''.}}

By default, the first hard disk will be selected. If you wish to install on a different disk, use the "Selected Disk" drop-down menu to select the disk to install into.

By default, the first hard disk will be selected. If you wish to install on a different disk, use the "Selected Disk" drop-down menu to select the disk to install into.

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{{note|width=48.5%|icon64=PC-BSD® will only install into a primary partition. That is, you can not install PC-BSD® into a secondary or an extended partition. If you wish to create a new primary partition to install into, see [[Partitioning the Hard Drive]] for instructions on how to do this.}}

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{{note|icon64=PC-BSD® will only install into a primary partition. That is, you can not install PC-BSD® into a secondary or an extended partition. If you wish to create a new primary partition to install into, see {{local|link=Partitioning the Hard Drive}} for instructions on how to do this.}}

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Once you have selected the disk and partition, click "Next" to see the screen shown in Figure 3.4d.

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Once you have selected the disk and partition, click "Next" to return to the disk "Summary" screen so that you can review your selections. If you wish to change anything, use the "Back" button to return to a previous screen. Otherwise, click "Finish" to leave the wizard. Click ''Next'' then ''Yes'' to start the installation.

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If you wish to encrypt the data in your home directory, check the box labelled "Encrypt user data". This option will automatically encrypt all of the data stored in ''/usr'', including the home directories of all of the users that you create. If you decide to encrypt, review [[Booting Into PC-BSD®#If You Encrypted a Filesystem|if You Encrypted a Filesystem]] for instructions on how to enter your passphrase at system bootup.

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If you check this box, enter and confirm a passphrase. You will be prompted to enter this passphrase whenever you boot into PC-BSD®. This means that if someone else boots your computer, they will not be able to boot into PC-BSD® if they do not know your passphrase. However, if you forget your passphrase, you will not be able to access PC-BSD® either. For these reasons, it is important to choose a good passphrase that other users will not guess and which you will not forget. Passphrases are case-sensitive and can contain spaces. The passphrase should be memorable to you, such as a line from a song or piece of literature, but hard to guess, in that people who know you should not be able to guess your favorite line from a song or piece of literature.

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{{warning|icon64=be careful if you have changed your keyboard variant and layout. At this time, the GELI encryption framework only supports QWERTY passphrases, so do not use any characters not found on a QWERTY keyboard in your passphrase. '' '''DO NOT ''' set a passphrase with accents or special characters which are not found on a US keyboard.'' This is a limitation in FreeBSD as the keymap is not loaded until after the passphrase is entered, meaning that such a passphrase will render that partition as inaccessible.}}

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It is important to remember to make a backup copy of your keys either to another system or to a removable media such as a USB thumb drive. You should do so after your first boot into PC-BSD®. The keys are located in ''/boot/keys/'', so that is the directory that you should backup.

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Once you click "Next", the wizard will return to the disk "Summary" screen so that you can review your selections. If you wish to change anything, use the "Back" button to return to a previous screen. Otherwise, click "Finish" to leave the wizard. Click ''Next'' then ''Yes'' to start the installation.

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=== Advanced Mode === <!--T:20-->

=== Advanced Mode === <!--T:20-->

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If you select advanced mode, the wizard will again display the screen shown in Figure 3.4c. This time, that screen has the addition of a checkbox:

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If you select advanced mode, the wizard will display the screen shown in Figure 3.4d.

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'''Partition disk with GPT:''' {{citelink|wp|url=GUID_Partition_Table|GPT}} is a partition table layout that supports larger partition sizes than the traditional MBR layout. ''' ''If your installation disk/partition is larger than 2 TB, this box must be checked,'' ''' otherwise checking this box is optional. Some older motherboards do not support this option. If the installation fails with this option checked, try again with the box unchecked. It has been reported that some Linux distros do not understand UFS partitions that use GPT. When in doubt, leave this box unchecked.[[File:Installer3f.png|thumb|393px|'''Figure 3.4e: Selecting the Filesystem''']]

{{warning|width=48.5%|icon64=if you plan to dual boot with LILO or legacy GRUB, ''' ''do not'' ''' check the GPT box. These bootloaders do not support the GPT format.}}

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This screen provides the following options:

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After making your selections click “Next” to access the filesystem selection screen shown in Figure 3.4e.

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* '''Partition disk with GPT:''' {{citelink|wp|url=GUID_Partition_Table|txt=GPT}} is a partition table layout that supports larger partition sizes than the traditional MBR layout. ''' ''If your installation disk/partition is larger than 2 TB, this box must be checked,'' ''' otherwise checking this box is optional. Some older motherboards do not support this option. If the installation fails with this option checked, try again with the box unchecked. When in doubt, leave this box unchecked.

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This screen allows you to choose from the following filesystem types:

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* '''Force ZFS 4k block size:''' this option should only be checked if you know for sure that the disk supports 4k, even though it lies and reports its size as 512b. Use with caution as it may cause the installation to fail.

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* '''UFS:''' the Unix File System is the original filesystem used by BSD systems. This is the default selection on systems with less than 2GB of RAM.

* '''ZFS:''' this filesystem was originally developed by Sun and adds many features. You can learn more about ZFS at {{citelink|wp|url=ZFS|txt=Wikipedia}} and the {{citelink|fbsdh|url=filesystems-zfs.html|txt=FreeBSD Handbook}}. This is the default selection on systems with more than 2GB of RAM and, due to ZFS RAM requirements, is not available for selection on systems with less than 2GB of RAM.

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* '''ZFS pool name:''' if you wish to use a pool name other than the default of ''tank'', check this box and input the name of the pool. Note that ''root'' is a reserved term and can not be used as a pool name.

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This screen also provides the following checkbox:

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After making your selections click “Next” to access the ZFS configuration screen. The rest of this section provides a ZFS overview and demonstrates how to customize the ZFS layout.

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* '''Install bootable MBR:''' this option displays the {{citelink|fbsdh|url=boot-blocks.html|txt=FreeBSD boot manager}} when the system boots. This is a simple and non-configurable boot manager which may or may not detect other operating systems installed on the computer. If you plan to only boot into PC-BSD® or to [[Dual Booting | configure an alternate boot manager]], you can uncheck this box.

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The rest of this section demonstrates how to customize the UFS or ZFS layout.

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==== UFS Layout ==== <!--T:31-->

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If you select UFS and click "Next", the default UFS layout will be displayed, as seen in the example in Figure 3.4f.

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In this example, a 12GB disk has four partitions with mount points for ''/'', SWAP, ''/var'', and ''/usr''. The actual sizes of the partitions created by the default layout will vary, depending upon the size of the disk, but always follow this logic:

* the default size of ''/'' (root) will be 2 GB; this partition holds the root user's home directory as well as the files needed by the operating system. You should not use a size less than 1 GB. Do not store large files in the root user's home directory as the root partition is meant to be reserved for the operating system files.

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* the default size of the swap partition will be RAM (physical memory) size times 2 up to a maximum of 4GB. You can increase this if you want a larger swap partition (also known as a paging file or virtual memory in Windows), though this is not necessary as PC-BSD® has a built-in Swap Extender Daemon ('''swapexd''') that monitors how much swap space is available on the system. When the operating system is running out of swap space, '''swapexd''' attempts to create a new, larger swap file. When the operating system no longer needs so much swap space, '''swapexd''' decreases the size of the swap file.

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{{danger|width=48.5%|icon64=if your hardware uses a solid state drive instead of a hard drive (e.g. an Asus Eee Netbook), '' '''do not''' '' create a swap partition as swap will shorten the life of the solid state drive. '''swapexd''' will not create a swap file if you do not create one during installation.}}

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* the default size of ''/var'' will be 2 GB. This partition holds data that varies such as logs, printer queues, and the FreeBSD packages database. You can safely increase the size of this partition, though this is usually not needed on a desktop system.

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* the rest of the disk space will go to ''/usr''. This partition holds everything else, such as users' home directories and installed applications.

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The UFS+SUJ means that this version of UFS adds a light version of journaling to soft updates as described in this {{citelink|url=http://www.mckusick.com/BSDCan/bsdcan2010.pdf|txt=technical paper}}. This is the default filesystem type as it virtually eliminates the need to run '''fsck'''. In practical terms, this means that even if the system is not cleanly shutdown (e.g. because of a power outage), it will still boot up quickly without losing any data.

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If you right-click any partition other than ''/'', you can select to "Enable Encryption". A pop-up box will prompt for the passphrase. When the system boots, you will be prompted for the passphrase for each partition that you encrypt, so be sure to remember the passphrases and to backup your encryption keys as described in the [[Disk_Selection_Screen#Basic_Mode|Basic Mode]] section.

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Three buttons are provided should you wish to modify the default layout:

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* '''Add:''' this button will remain greyed out as long as there is no free space to work with. If free space is available, this button can be used to add a partition. It will prompt you for the name of the mount point and size of the new partition.

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* '''Resize:''' allows you to decrease or increase (if free space is available) the size of the highlighted partition.

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* '''Remove:''' will delete the highlighted partition. This can be used to create free space in order to recreate that partition at a smaller size or to increase the size of the remaining partitions.

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If you decide to change the default partitions, keep the following points in mind:

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* You must have a ''/'' partition to hold the operating system; make sure it is at least 1 GB in size.

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* Unless your system has a solid state drive, you want a swap partition.

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* You can have one big root partition (plus a swap partition). If you decide to do this, the installation will create ''/var'' and ''/usr'' directories as they are needed by applications. This is often discouraged on server systems, but is an option on desktop systems.

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* You can remove ''/usr'' and divide the newly created free space into multiple partitions. For example, some users like to create separate partitions to hold their video files, artwork, work files, etc. When creating multiple partitions, use names that makes sense to you (e.g. ''/usr1'', ''/usr2'' or ''/video'', ''/work'') and set sizes that makes sense for the amount of content each partition will hold. If you decide to take this approach, you should still make a good sized ''/usr'' (otherwise it will be placed on root which will quickly fill up the / partition). The size of ''/usr'' should be sufficient to store any software you install.

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Once you click "Next", the wizard will show a summary of your selections. If you wish to change anything, use the "Back" button to return to a previous screen. Otherwise, click "Finish" to leave the wizard and return to the "Disk Selection" screen.

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==== ZFS Overview ==== <!--T:50-->

==== ZFS Overview ==== <!--T:50-->

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ZFS is a combined filesystem and logical volume manager originally designed by Sun Microsystems. It was ported to FreeBSD and has been part of the operating system since FreeBSD 7.0.

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ZFS is an enterprise grade file-system, which provides many features including: support for high storage capacities, high reliability, the ability to quickly take snapshots, boot environments, continuous integrity checking and automatic repair, RAIDZ which was designed to overcome the limitations of hardware RAID, and native NFSv4 ACLs.

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ZFS provides many features including: support for high storage capacities, snapshots and copy-on-write clones, continuous integrity checking and automatic repair, RAIDZ which was designed to overcome the limitations of hardware RAID, and native NFSv4 ACLs.

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'''Mirror:''' a form of RAID where all data is mirrored onto two disks, creating a redundant copy should one disk fail.

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'''Mirror:''' a form of RAID where all data is mirrored onto two or more disks, creating a redundant copy should a disk fail.

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If you select ZFS and click "Next", the disk setup wizard allows you to configure your ZFS layout. The initial ZFS configuration screen is seen in Figure 3.4g.

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In Advanced Mode, the disk setup wizard allows you to configure your ZFS layout. The initial ZFS configuration screen is seen in Figure 3.4e.

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[[File:Zfs2a.png|thumb|393px|'''Figure 3.4g: ZFS Configuration''']]''

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[[File:Zfs2a.png|thumb|393px|'''Figure 3.4e: ZFS Configuration''']]

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If you wish to format the hard drive or partition that you selected in Figure 3.4c with ZFS, leave the "Enable ZFS mirror/raidz mode" box unchecked and click "Next" to go to the "Encrypt user data" screen shown in Figure 3.4d. Unlike UFS, which only encrypts ''/usr/'', selecting encryption for ZFS encrypts the entire pool. In other words, it encrypts the entire selected disk or partition, except for a small, UFS ''/boot'' partition.

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If your system contains multiple drives and you would like to use them to create a ZFS mirror or RAIDZ, check the box "Enable ZFS mirror/raidz mode" which will enable the rest of the options in this screen. In the example shown in Figure 3.4g, the system has 7 disks, all of which are the same size. The first disk, ''ada0'', was pre-selected in Figure 3.4c and the remaining 6 disks (''ada1'' to ''ada6'') are available to be added to the ZFS pool.

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If your system contains multiple drives and you would like to use them to create a ZFS mirror or RAIDZ, check the box "Enable ZFS mirror/raidz mode" which will enable the rest of the options in this screen. In the example shown in Figure 3.4e, the system has 7 disks, all of which are the same size. The first disk, ''ada0'', was pre-selected in Figure 3.4d and the remaining 6 disks (''ada1'' to ''ada6'') are available to be added to the ZFS pool.

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{{note|width=48.5%|icon64=the PC-BSD® installer requires you to use entire disks (not partitions) when creating a ZFS mirror or RAIDZ. At this time, encryption is not supported for multiple disk configurations.}}

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{{note|icon64=the PC-BSD® installer requires you to use entire disks (not partitions) when creating a ZFS mirror or RAIDZ.}}

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To use multiple disks, select the type of configuration from the "ZFS Virtual Device Mode" drop-down menu, then check the box for each disk that you would like to add to that configuration. When finished, click the Next button to see the default layout screen shown in Figure 3.4h.

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To use multiple disks, select the type of configuration from the "ZFS Virtual Device Mode" drop-down menu, then check the box for each disk that you would like to add to that configuration. When finished, click the Next button to see the default layout screen shown in Figure 3.4f.

Regardless of how many disks you selected for your ZFS configuration, the default layout will be the same. Unlike UFS, ZFS does not require separate partitions for ''/usr'', ''/tmp'', or ''/var''. Instead, you create one ZFS partition (pool) and specify multiple mount points. A ''/boot'' partition is not mandatory with ZFS as the PC-BSD® installer puts a 64k partition at the beginning of the drive.

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Regardless of how many disks you selected for your ZFS configuration, the default layout will be the same. ZFS does not require separate partitions for ''/usr'', ''/tmp'', or ''/var''. Instead, you create one ZFS partition (pool) and specify a mount for each dataset. A ''/boot'' partition is not mandatory with ZFS as the PC-BSD® installer puts a 64k partition at the beginning of the drive.

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{{warning|icon64=''' ''do not remove any of the default mount points'' ''' as they are used by PC-BSD®.}}

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You can use the "Add" button to add additional mount points. You will only be prompted for the name of the mount point as, unlike UFS, size is not limited at creation time. Instead, the data on any mount point can continue to grow as long as space remains within the ZFS pool.

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You can use the "Add" button to add additional mount points. You will only be prompted for the name of the mount point as size is not limited at creation time. Instead, the data on any mount point can continue to grow as long as space remains within the ZFS pool.

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{{warning|width=48.5%|icon64=do not remove any of the default mount points as they are used by PC-BSD®.}}

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If you wish to set the swap size, click the "Swap Size" button. This will prompt you to enter a size in MB. If you have created a RAIDZ or mirror, a swap partition of the specified size will be created on each disk and mirrored between the drives. For example, if you specify a 2048MB swap size, a 2GB swap partition will be created on all of the specified disks, yet the total swap size will be 2GB, due to redundancy.

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If you right-click any mount point (other than ''/swap''), you can toggle between enabling or disabling any of the following ZFS properties. For performance reasons, the PC-BSD® installer will not allow you to remove or modify ''/swap''.

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If you right-click any mount point, you can toggle between enabling or disabling any of the following ZFS properties.

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Latest revision as of 20:51, 15 December 2013

Disk Selection ScreenProtection (edit): sysopEdited by: Tigersharke

The "Disk Selection" screen, seen in Figure 3.4a, summarizes the default disk configuration.

By default, PC-BSD® will assume that you wish to install on the entire first disk.

Figure 3.4a: Disk Selection Screen

If you are installing PC-BSD® as the only operating system on your computer, simply click "Next" to start the installation. However, if this is not your intent, review the rest of this section to determine how to layout your disk. If you plan on booting PC-BSD® with another operating system, you should also review the section on Dual Booting.

If you wish to select which disk or partition to install PC-BSD® into, click the "Customize" button to start the "Disk Setup Wizard", shown in Figure 3.4b.

The wizard provides three modes of operation. The rest of this section describes these modes in detail.

Basic: (default) select this mode if you wish to specify which partition or disk to install to.

Advanced: select this mode if you wish to specify the installation partition or disk, use GPT partitioning, disable the FreeBSD boot menu, or specify the filesystem layout.

FreeBSD Expert: select this mode if you prefer to drop down to a shell to manually enter the commands to setup your disk.

Regardless of the mode that you select, once the disk wizard completes and you click "Next" at the disk "Summary" screen, a pop-up window will ask if you would like to start the installation. Be sure to review the disk summary before clicking "Yes" and starting the installation. The disk "Summary" screen is your very last chance to make sure that you are ready. Once you click "Yes", the selected hard drive or partition will be formatted and any data it contains will be lost.

Figure 3.4b: Disk Setup Wizard

Once you have finished configuring your disks, you can save the finished configuration to re-use it at a later time. Insert a FAT-formatted USB stick and click "Save Config to USB".

Contents

If you select "Basic" mode, the wizard will display the screen shown in Figure 3.4c.

Figure 3.4c: Select a Disk or Partition

By default, the first hard disk will be selected. If you wish to install on a different disk, use the "Selected Disk" drop-down menu to select the disk to install into.

By default, the entire selected disk will be formatted. If the disk has been divided into partitions and you wish to install into a specific partition, use the "Selected Partition" drop-down menu to select the desired primary partition.

PC-BSD® will only install into a primary partition. That is, you can not install PC-BSD® into a secondary or an extended partition. If you wish to create a new primary partition to install into, see Partitioning the Hard Drive for instructions on how to do this.

Once you have selected the disk and partition, click "Next" to return to the disk "Summary" screen so that you can review your selections. If you wish to change anything, use the "Back" button to return to a previous screen. Otherwise, click "Finish" to leave the wizard. Click Next then Yes to start the installation.

If you select advanced mode, the wizard will display the screen shown in Figure 3.4d.

Figure 3.4d: Advanced Mode Options

This screen provides the following options:

Partition disk with GPT:GPT[1] is a partition table layout that supports larger partition sizes than the traditional MBR layout. If your installation disk/partition is larger than 2 TB, this box must be checked, otherwise checking this box is optional. Some older motherboards do not support this option. If the installation fails with this option checked, try again with the box unchecked. When in doubt, leave this box unchecked.

Force ZFS 4k block size: this option should only be checked if you know for sure that the disk supports 4k, even though it lies and reports its size as 512b. Use with caution as it may cause the installation to fail.

ZFS is an enterprise grade file-system, which provides many features including: support for high storage capacities, high reliability, the ability to quickly take snapshots, boot environments, continuous integrity checking and automatic repair, RAIDZ which was designed to overcome the limitations of hardware RAID, and native NFSv4 ACLs.

If you are new to ZFS, the Wikipedia entry on ZFS[2] provides an excellent starting point to learn about its features. These resources are also useful to bookmark and refer to as needed:

Pool: a collection of devices that provides physical storage and data replication managed by ZFS. This pooled storage model eliminates the concept of volumes and the associated problems of partitions, provisioning, wasted bandwidth and stranded storage. Thousands of filesystems can draw from a common storage pool, each one consuming only as much space as it actually needs. The combined I/O bandwidth of all devices in the pool is available to all filesystems at all times. The Storage Pools Recommendations[9] of the ZFS Best Practices Guide provides detailed recommendations for creating the storage pool.

Mirror: a form of RAID where all data is mirrored onto two or more disks, creating a redundant copy should a disk fail.

RAIDZ: ZFS software solution that is equivalent to RAID5 in that it allows one disk to fail without losing data. Requires a minimum of 3 disks though 5 disks is recommended.

RAIDZ2: double-parity ZFS software solution that is similar to RAID6 in that it allows two disks to fail without losing data. Requires a minimum of 4 disks.

RAIDZ3: triple-parity ZFS software solution. RAIDZ3 offers three parity drives and can operate in degraded mode if up to three drives fail with no restrictions on which drives can fail.

Dataset: once a pool is created, it can be divided into datasets. A dataset is similar to a folder in that it supports permissions. A dataset is also similar to a filesystem in that you can set properties such as quotas and compression.

Snapshot: a read-only point-in-time copy of a filesystem. Snapshots can be created quickly and, if little data changes, new snapshots take up very little space. For example, a snapshot where no files have changed takes 0MB of storage, but if you change a 10GB file it will keep a copy of both the old and the new 10GB version. Snapshots provide a clever way of keeping a history of files, should you need to recover an older copy or even a deleted file. For this reason, many administrators take snapshots often (e.g. every 15 minutes), store them for a period of time (e.g. for a month), and store them on another system. Such a strategy allows the administrator to roll the system back to a specific time or, if there is a catastrophic loss, an off-site snapshot can restore the system up to the last snapshot interval (e.g. within 15 minutes of the data loss). Snapshots can be cloned or rolled back, but the files on the snapshot cannot be accessed independently.

Clone: a writable copy of a snapshot which can only be created on the same ZFS volume. Clones provide an extremely space-efficient way to store many copies of mostly-shared data such as workspaces, software installations, and diskless clients. Clones do not inherit the properties of the parent dataset, but rather inherit the properties based on where the clone is created in the ZFS pool. Because a clone initially shares all its disk space with the original snapshot, its used property is initially zero. As changes are made to the clone, it uses more space.

In Advanced Mode, the disk setup wizard allows you to configure your ZFS layout. The initial ZFS configuration screen is seen in Figure 3.4e.

Figure 3.4e: ZFS Configuration

If your system contains multiple drives and you would like to use them to create a ZFS mirror or RAIDZ, check the box "Enable ZFS mirror/raidz mode" which will enable the rest of the options in this screen. In the example shown in Figure 3.4e, the system has 7 disks, all of which are the same size. The first disk, ada0, was pre-selected in Figure 3.4d and the remaining 6 disks (ada1 to ada6) are available to be added to the ZFS pool.

The PC-BSD® installer requires you to use entire disks (not partitions) when creating a ZFS mirror or RAIDZ.

If you have never configured a RAIDZ before, take the time to read the RAIDZ Configuration Requirements and Recommendations[10] first. It indicates the optimum number of disks for each type of configuration. While ZFS will let you use disks of different sizes, this is discouraged as it will decrease storage capacity and performance of the ZFS system.

The PC-BSD® installer supports the following ZFS configurations:

mirror: requires a minimum of 2 disks.

RAIDZ1: requires a minimum of 3 disks. For best performance, 3, 5, or 9 disks are recommended.

RAIDZ2: requires a minimum of 4 disks. For best performance, 4, 6, or 10 disks are recommended.

RAIDZ3: requires a minimum of 5 disks. For best performance, 5, 7, or 11 disks are recommended.

The installer will not let you save a configuration if your system does not meet the minimum number of disks required by that configuration. As you select a configuration, a message will indicate how many more disks you need to select.

To use multiple disks, select the type of configuration from the "ZFS Virtual Device Mode" drop-down menu, then check the box for each disk that you would like to add to that configuration. When finished, click the Next button to see the default layout screen shown in Figure 3.4f.

Figure 3.4f: Default ZFS Layout

Regardless of how many disks you selected for your ZFS configuration, the default layout will be the same. ZFS does not require separate partitions for /usr, /tmp, or /var. Instead, you create one ZFS partition (pool) and specify a mount for each dataset. A /boot partition is not mandatory with ZFS as the PC-BSD® installer puts a 64k partition at the beginning of the drive.

do not remove any of the default mount points as they are used by PC-BSD®.

You can use the "Add" button to add additional mount points. You will only be prompted for the name of the mount point as size is not limited at creation time. Instead, the data on any mount point can continue to grow as long as space remains within the ZFS pool.

If you wish to set the swap size, click the "Swap Size" button. This will prompt you to enter a size in MB. If you have created a RAIDZ or mirror, a swap partition of the specified size will be created on each disk and mirrored between the drives. For example, if you specify a 2048MB swap size, a 2GB swap partition will be created on all of the specified disks, yet the total swap size will be 2GB, due to redundancy.

If you right-click any mount point, you can toggle between enabling or disabling any of the following ZFS properties.

atime: when set to "on", controls whether the access time for files is updated when they are read. When set to "off", this property avoids producing write traffic when reading files and can result in significant performance gains, though it might confuse mailers and some other utilities.

canmount: if set to "off", the filesystem cannot be mounted.

checksum: automatically verifies the integrity of the data stored on disks. Setting this property to "off" is highly discouraged.

compression: if set to "on", automatically compresses stored data to conserve disk space.

exec: if set to "off", processes can not be executed from within this filesystem.

Once you click "Next", the wizard will show a summary of your selections. If you wish to change anything, use the "Back" button to return to a previous screen. Otherwise, click "Finish" to leave the wizard and return to the "Disk Selection" screen.

If you select FreeBSD expert mode, you will be prompted to launch a terminal where you can use command line utilities such as bsdinstall or sysinstall to manually configure the partitions. When you are finished, type exit to leave the terminal, then click "Next" to review the disk summary. If you wish to change anything, use the "Back" button to return to a previous screen. Otherwise, click "Finish" to leave the wizard and return to the "Disk Selection" screen.